Weight of the Waters
by Unstoppable Cyborg
Summary: AU: Claire doesn't make it back from when she retrieves the bridge from the shipping container in the ocean. Rated T for semi-graphic descriptions of drowning; it's only shippy if you squint.


**If I owned** ** _Trollhunters_** **, this fanfic still wouldn't be canon. Credit goes to infographicisminetocommand on tumblr for the inspiration for this fic.**

* * *

Toby hated the ocean. He had hated it since before he could spell the word hate because it was what had taken his parents from him. As a kid, there had been two things that terrified him to no end: storms and being submerged in water. It had been a struggle for Nana to convince him to take baths. As soon as he was able he started taking showers instead. However, it had been fourteen years. Toby had thought he had gotten over his fear, but then the universe proved him wrong.

Toby stayed where they had retrieved the pieces of the bridge until Steve began to stir. Toby had deleted the video from his phone (no need to ruin Jim's name for something he had no affect on). He had had a plan for when Claire finally made a portal to send herself back. However, even with his gravity hammer Toby didn't think he had the strength to send the bully back to Arcadia, so he grabbed NotEnrique, and ran to where they had stashed the bikes. He contemplated giving NotEnrique the glamour mask, so that Claire's parents wouldn't worry, but decided against it. He still needed to pretend to be Jim, and maybe Claire had made a portal straight to her bed so that she could sleep it off. Or maybe he hadn't been the best emotional anchor and she was somewhere in the woods. He left her bike so that she'd know where to get it and tried not to feel like she was dead. She had once said to save his anger for the Darklands, back when they had thought everyone – well, everyone but AAARRRGGHH! – was going there to rescue Enrique as opposed to just Jim. Toby figured he may as well honor Claire's wishes as best he could.

He was able to keep pretending that there was a chance Claire was still alive until he arrived home. He was about to say something to his Wingman when he remembered. In just over two weeks, Toby had lost two of his closest friends, and Jim was nearly a third. He had almost lost NotEnrique as well. It sucked, knowing that for hope of rebuilding the bridge and getting Jim back meant that, just like his parents, Claire had to die in the middle of the ocean.

"Why?" Toby asked the emptiness of his room. If he had a chance to get Claire back, would he have traded away Jim? Jim was his best friend, but only people like Angor Rot, Nomura, Bular, and Strickler deserved to drown, and even those were iffy. Jim had decided to go to the Darklands without them, but Claire had decided to send herself and NotEnrique into an unknown location.

His room wasn't empty, however. Gnome Chompsky walked out of the dollhouse and stared up at him. Toby remembered back to when he had first met the gnome. Jim had been smaller; all of their problems had been so much smaller back then, even if they hadn't felt like it. Toby let out a sob as he remembered how he was going to drown Chompsky and then hide the remains using the garbage disposal.

"I'm so sorry, you didn't deserve that," Toby cried, not sure who he was speaking to. Did it matter though? None of them deserved drowning. Not his parents, not nearly NotEnrique and Chompsky, and certainly not Claire.

* * *

Claire saw Suzy Snooze float upwards towards the top of the shipping container in a dead man's float. It wasn't just a matter of if she could muster the anger to save her friend anymore. It was ow a matter of if she didn't act _now_ she'd be losing her other brother after finally getting back her first one.

She couldn't lose anyone else.

Saltwater burned her eyes as she opened a portal to Toby and another, larger rupture opened in the side of the shipping container. As NotEnrique passed through the portal to safety, Claire swam to a crate slipping away from its trajectory. She pushed it back into place; her body slipped through the rupture. She tried to swim back through it, even though her limbs felt heavy and exhausted from the vast number of portals she had made.

The portal closed once the crate was through, leaving Claire stranded in a dark abyss. In some ways, it was not unlike where she had found herself when she had taken the Staff from Angor Rot. There were a couple major differences, however. She had been weightless, and a light had filtered through the area from where she and the assassin had passed through. Also, she could breathe there. Here, there was neither light nor air to be had, and the weight of the water around her threatened to crush her.

Claire's fingers twitched along the edge of the staff. Her fear had saved NotEnrique, why couldn't she use fear to save herself? As the lack of oxygen burned her body, anger burned her mind. Anger at the staff that refused to obey her, at Steve for calling Jim a fake even though the bully couldn't have known the extent of Jim's heroism, at herself for not having practiced more. Were she more practiced, she might've not risked them drowning. Anger at Gunmar and the goblins and Strickler and even NotEnrique for kidnapping her brother, anger at her parents and herself for letting him get kidnapped, anger at Jim for going to the Darklands in the first place because it was everyone but Toby's fault that she was _drowning!_

Claire opened her mouth to scream. Maybe her anger needed multiple outlets as opposed to just the Staff if she was going to make it out of here alive.

Just as natured abhorred a vacuum, water rushed into her mouth before she could realize her mistake. She tried not to cry, not to open her mouth or inhale through her nose even as her body begged for air. The lack of it and the pressure of the water felt like she was splintering along her jaw, up her fingers, and outward from her eyes.

Claire opened her mouth again, and this time she felt a sticker substance than saltwater exit at the same time as the last bubbles of carbon dioxide. Briefly she tasted bitter iron, but the taste of salt overwhelmed her. She fought against the undercurrent to bring both hands upon the Staff as one last call for it to help her, one last desperate attempt to save herself.

Anchor. She needed someone or something to anchor herself to but thinking of anyone was so difficult.

She thought she saw the area near her hands and the Staff grow darker than the choking blackness that surrounded her.

Claire gasped for air as she pushed herself above the waves before collapsing on the rocky shore. She coughed weakly as the cold air and feeling of wariness hit her, reminding her of the seawater clinging to her clothes. She coughed, and a mixture of saltwater and a black liquid came out. Once again, the tastes of salt, iron, and a bitterness not unlike the 100% baker's chocolate Jim and her Papi had in their respective kitchens filled her mouth. As she brought her hand up to rub at her mouth, she frowned. It was as if the veins in her fingers and hand had turned black. Was that what she had coughed up? Blackened blood? When she wiped her chin and jaw, the skin felt oddly grooved.

Where was she? She doubted she had been close enough to shore that she could have drifted upwards to shore and lived. However, neither Arcadia nor Guadalajara were exactly coastal, and she didn't have any poignant memories of beaches that she'd dwell on in times of crisis. The only pond, lake, or similar body of water that she'd care so deeply about that it would appear in her dying moments was currently trapped in the Darklands.

Claire coughed once more before a yellow light appeared at the corner of her vision. The water evaporated from Claire's clothing, hair, and lungs.

"I'm sorry you had to go through that, Child." Claire looked up to see a woman in golden armor levitating in front of her. "You have a rather strong grip on the Skathe-Hrün. It took a bit of time for me to get to it so I could save you."

She extended a hand tipped with armored claws to Claire. The sight of it, as well as the woman's words about the Shadow Staff, made Claire more uneasy than she had when she had first washed ashore.

"You'll probably have questions, but you'll want to rest first. I know just how much damage drowning does to you," the woman said.

While she had been taught not to look a gift horse in the mouth, Claire also had been taught to trust her instincts and be cautious when accepting a favor. According to her mother, often times what looked like a good deal would have strings attached. Claire's instincts were telling her to make a portal and go home before her parents could realize she wasn't there. She was already going to be in enough trouble since she had ditched school. However, she didn't have the strength to try and make a portal to Arcadia. The staff might not even be hers to command at the moment. Claire looked up at the woman's masked face to ask to be sent home. Instead, she couldn't help but notice just how similar the woman's eyes were to Toby's.

Claire took the woman's hand and let herself be led away.


End file.
